I look at myself. I’m eighteen and the only thing I know is this: I’m just like the bird, imperfect and slightly rusty, not knowing where I’m going from here. What exactly my future is. Dad rests a hand on my back as we leave the workshop that gives me immediate feelings of protection, like he knows what I’m thinking.
“You’re going to fly, kid,” he says softly, before walking ahead of me into the house.
I look up into the late evening sky and put it out there, for my one dream to come true. To make my dad proud of my future.
CHAPTER 1 - LEO
Ihate this apartment. It’s too small to hold so much silence. It clings to the walls, settles into the corners where dust gathers no matter how often my wife Sarah cleans. Sitting at the narrow kitchen table, my elbows braced against chipped laminate, I keep my stare on the same crack in the wall that I have stared at everyday for the past three months since moving here. It looks like a river on a map — winding, pointless, going nowhere. A lot like me.
New York hums outside the small window next to the table. Sirens. Voices. Life happening for other people. Everyone with different challenges and stresses in life. Some happy, some of them ready to end it all because it’s too much. Some of them trying to find a way to just survive. New York is just endless streets of ants, walking around aimlessly, rushing to wherever they are going, not living outside the bubble. Waiting for that large foot of a higher power or wealthy asshole to stamp down on aselect few to take everything we have away. I fucking hate it here and regret moving. But it’s what Sarah wanted. It’s always what Sarah wants.
We met in high school back in a small town in Ohio. I had a pretty good life there, I enjoyed the quieter side of things. The lower expectations of the town I grew up in. My mom died of sepsis when I was young, so it was just me and my dad. He never remarried and we had a great relationship. He is the sole reason I fell in love with art, metal sculptures in particular. My dad worked as a mechanic by day, but he lived in our garage creating all kinds of sculptures. We lived more in that tiny garage than we did the house. I miss him. He passed a year ago from a sudden heart attack. A year later I’m still trying to process it. Everything happened so fast after that. I wanted to stay at the house, but work options were limiting and Sarah had droned on for years about her desire to move to the big city. To be the couple to make it outside our town. We got married at twenty four, which was two years ago now. She is all I have. Friends are gone. All of that old life in the past like it never existed.
After I sold my dad’s house, we moved straight to New York, and the money is running out fast. Our credit cards are maxed out, the monthly payments becoming impossible. Living here with no steady income for the past three months has torn through what I have at a horrific speed. Besides having rent to pay, the cost of every other thing that you need to just exist has drank my bank account like the desert would inhale water. Of course Sarah doesn’t understand this and thinks moneygrows on trees. But I’m hoping things will turn around as I’ve finally found myself a job.
Tomorrow is my first day.
I will be working in the mail room at one of the most luxurious hotel chains in the US, Infinity Hotels. It’s so fancy I get to wear a uniform. Can’t have the mail man walking around in jeans and scruffy t-shirt. It’s nothing special, black pants with a black shirt with the hotel name sewn into the fabric.
The focus here is progression. Early mornings and the promise ofmaybe— maybe promotion, maybe stability, maybe Sarah easing up just a little. As you can tell, maybe is the vibe we are going for as nothing in this city is certain. I run my hands through my thick black hair that needs a trim as the thought sits heavy in my heart. It’s not fear exactly, but exhaustion so deep it feels like gravity on my soul. Pulling me down into the ground with all the expectations that are put on me daily.
Money is a constant ache and topic of conversation. Sarah keeps spreadsheets on her laptop, color-coded and hopeful. A fantasy life that she plans out ahead of us as she pinned all her dreams on this move. The numbers to her are hope, but the numbers in my head are like a quiet accusation.
I should be further along by now.
I should be someone else.
What I want is embarrassingly simple. A workshop. A place where time disappears. Where my hands hurt from handling all kinds of metal and no one is makingdemands. Art makes sense to me in a way nothing else ever has. It’s honest. It doesn’t pretend.
But wanting things doesn’t make them real.
Noise catches my attention and I look up to see Sarah moving around the bedroom which is partitioned off from the main room which is our living area, kitchen and dinette. Drawers opening and closing with firm efficiency. I watch her through the glass partition and sigh. I care for her a lot. We have been through so much, but I’m unsure why we got married. This isn’t what I thought love would be, but it’s all I’ve known. It’s comfortable.
She’s already changed for bed, her brown hair pulled back, phone glowing in her hand. She looks tired too — but her tired is sharpened into ambition, not dulled into retreat like mine. Sarah works at a bougie coffee shop with its long days on your feet. But she seems to enjoy it. Always happier around other people. She loves to people watch and find out about people’s lives. To find others to connect with and to aspire to be.
I watch as she approaches. She is naturally very pretty. Big brown eyes, petite build. Many people mistake her cute innocent looks for being a sweetheart, but she has the sharpest tongue I’ve ever witnessed.
“So,” she says, not looking at me. “Tomorrow’s the big day.”
I exhale slowly. “Yeah.”
“Mail room, right?” she says. “That’s good. Hotels are good. Lots of opportunity.”
I nod, though she can’t see it with her eyes still glued to her phone. A phone we can’t reallyafford. Opportunity. That word again. It’s always just ahead of me, like a door I can never quite reach.
She steps into the doorway, leaning against the frame and finally focuses herself on me, no love behind her expression, or even friendly affection, just scrutiny.
“You’re going to make a good impression, right? Talk to people. Let them know you’re interested in moving up.”
“I know Sarah, we’ve been through this multiple times. I’m not a child,” I say. My voice is calm. Something that I’ve practiced.
Sarah studies me, eyes sharp with familiarity. She’s known me since before disappointment settled into my bones. She knows when I’m drifting in these thoughts. I’ve never been this bad, it’s like this city has killed any optimism. I’m a chill guy, and work hard, but I’m never going to be that corporate guy that I know she so desperately wants me to change into.
“You can’t stay like this forever, Leo,” she says, softer now, as if that helps. “I just want more for us.”
Forus. The phrase lands like a responsibility I didn’t ask for but can’t put down. What I wanted was to invest the money from my dad’s house into having my own business. To create sculptures for private clients. Build a successful business. But according to Sarah it was a waste of money and not ambitious to create something out of a hobby. But I don’t want to have this argument again. When you live in close quarters like this coffin of an apartment, the mood weighs heavier than it would otherwise. I don’t have theenergy or patience, so I immediately defuse the situation.
“I’m just tired,” I say.
